The purpose of this research is to contribute to the understanding of processes of social and economic achievement in American society. Our analysis is guided by a basic model of the influence of socioeconomic origins on post-high school educational attainment, occupational achievement, and earnings which interprets that influence using intervening social psychological variables: measured academic ability, grades in school, the expectations of significant others, and educational and occupational aspirations. A major facet of our work in the next five years will be the application of this model to additional measurements of achievement--especially occupation and earnings pertaining to our sample at ages 30 to 35. A second facet will be to elaborate and expand our basic model by measuring and interpreting the effects of additional social background variables, social-psychological factors, and career contingencies on later social and economic achievements. Our basic data are for a random sample of approximately 9,000 young people who were first studied in 1957, when they were seniors in Wisconsin high schools, and were successfully followed up in 1964 and will be restudied again in 1974.